The present invention relates generally to an apparatus and a method for processing information, and a program and a program storage medium used therefor, and particularly to an apparatus and a method for processing information for displaying images, and a program and a program storage medium used therefor.
In recent years technologies have been available with personal computers for example in which a thumbnail which corresponds to still picture or moving picture data is displayed for a personal computer user to select these data by means of the thumbnail to manipulate the selected data.
However, if the position of a thumbnail changes when it has been operated, the user cannot sometimes recognize the change of the position.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to allow the user to surely recognize the change in images when they are operated.
According to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided an information processing apparatus comprising: detection means for detecting a first operation; computation means for computing, when the detection means has detected the first operation, a ratio of movement of a displayed image to a distance from a current position of an image to a first destination specified by the first operation by applying, every predetermined period, a transition function to an elapsed time from the detection of the first operation; specification means for specifying a display position of the image toward the first destination on the basis of the ratio of movement of the image computed by said computation means; and display control means for controlling the display of the image so that the image is displayed, every predetermined period, at a position specified by said specification means.
Preferably, if a second operation is detected by the detection means while the image is moving to the first destination, the computation means applies, every predetermined period, a transition function to an elapsed time from the detection of the second operation to compute a ratio of the movement of the image to a distance from a moving position of the image at which the second operation has been detected to a second destination specified by the second operation; and if the second operation is detected by the detection means while the image is moving to the first destination, the specification means specifies a display position of the image toward the second destination on the basis of the ratio of movement of the image computed by the computation means.
According to a second aspect of the present invention, there is provided an information processing method comprising the steps of: detecting an operation; computing, when the operation has been detected in the detecting step, a ratio of movement of a displayed image to a distance from a current position of a image to destination specified by the operation, by applying, every predetermined period, a transition function to an elapsed time from the detection of the operation; specifying a display position of the image toward the destination on the basis of the ratio of movement of the image computed in the computation step; and controlling the display of the image so that the image is displayed, every predetermined period, at a position specified in the specification step.
According to a third aspect of the present invention, there is provided a program storage medium storing a computer-readable program comprising the steps of: detecting an operation; computing, when the operation has been detected in the detecting step, a ratio of movement of a displayed image to a distance from a current position of a image to destination specified by the operation, by applying, every predetermined period, a transition function to an elapsed time from the detection of the operation; specifying a display position of the image toward the destination on the basis of the ratio of movement of the image computed in the computation step; and controlling the display of the image so that the image is displayed, every predetermined period, at a position specified in the specification step.
According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a computer-readable program comprising the steps of: detecting an operation; computing, when the operation has been detected in the detecting step, a ratio of movement of a displayed image to a distance from a current position of a image to destination specified by the operation, by applying, every predetermined period, a transition function to an elapsed time from the detection of the operation; specifying a display position of the image toward the destination on the basis of the ratio of movement of the image computed in the computation step; and controlling the display of the image so that the image is displayed, every predetermined period, at a position specified in the specification step.
In the above-mentioned inventions, preferably, the transition function is defined so that a travel distance per unit time decreases with time, the transition function is variable depending on a predetermined condition, and the predetermined condition is determined by the degrees of importance of a displayed object.
In the above-mentioned inventions, an operation is detected and, at the time of detection, a transition function is applied, every predetermined period, to an elapsed time from the detection of the operation, a ratio of the movement of the image to a distance from the current display position to a destination specified by the operation, and, on the basis of the obtained ratio of the image movement, an image display position toward the destination is specified, at which the image is displayed every predetermined period.